Forests, Archives, Memory: Decolonizing Environmental Humanities through Turkish Literature |

Event Summary

This talk presents a fresh perspective on the intersection of Turkish literature with ecological violence, collective memory, and socio-political struggles.

Drawing on environmental humanities and the emerging field of environmental memory studies, it introduces and explores the concept of “arboreal memory,” positioning trees and forests as living archives that bear witness to environmental and social traumas. Through an analysis of literary representations of Mediterranean and Anatolian landscapes, the talk investigates how arboreal spaces serve as sites where both human and nonhuman collectives remember and respond to ecological destruction and its lasting aftermath.

By situating Turkish literature at the crossroads of environmental humanities, contemporary memory studies, and postcolonial ecocriticism, this talk examines “arboreal memory” as a conceptual, political, and aesthetic tool in the decolonisation of environmental thought. Analyzing literary works by authors such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Yaşar Kemal, Latife Tekin, and Sema Kaygusuz—who engage with arboreal themes—the talk highlights how trees, as nonhuman collectives, act as agents in preserving and transmitting histories of violence, resistance, and ecological change. In doing so, it opens a new avenue for exploring the intersection of environment and memory in Turkish literature, offering novel insights into how ecological trauma is memorialised and how narratives of ecological violence shape cultural and political imaginaries.

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Event Speakers

Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim

Kadir Has University

Deniz Gündoğan İbrişim is a literary scholar specializing in cultural trauma & memory studies, gender and sexuality, postcolonial theory, Anglophone literatures (with a focus on Africa and the Middle East), and environmental humanities. As a Fulbright Fellow, she earned her PhD in Comparative Literature from Washington University in St.Louis. From 2021 to 2023, she was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Sabancı University, where she led a project on literary and artistic representations of climate witnessing in the Mediterranean. She has published extensively on environmental trauma and grief, nonhuman forms of witnessing and contemporary literature. She is the author of Gaflet: Modern Türkçe Edebiyatın Cinsiyetçi Sinir Uçları (Metis, 2019, co-authored with Sema Kaygusuz) and Travma ve Anlatı (Livera, 2024). She is currently an assistant professor in the Core Program at Kadir Has University and serves on the management committee of the COST Action “Slow Memory: Transformative Practices for Times of Uneven and Accelerating Change (SlowMemo).” Her book, Slow Trauma in Anglophone World Literature: Relational and Response-able Narratives from the Global South, is in progress. Additionally, she hosts the radio program “Ecocosmopolitan” on Apaçık Radio, a leading independent station in Istanbul.